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[maxl]

I finished a new "early access" demo that features quite a lot of content already. What it offers is practically feature complete, I plan to just do some cosmetic changes to the NPCs and some of the enemies.

You can download it here: http://www.imake-games.com/nubs/earlyBuilds/NubsAdventureEarlyAccess.jar.zip

Features:

• the almighty boomerang
• multiple cheesy cutscenes
• an unfair(?) boss fight
• at least an hour of gameplay (I speedrun through it and timed myself, you will probably die often need a bit longer)
  
• a barebones menu including a few options
• a fourth wall breaking ending
• music, yet very little sound effects
• and hopefully some fun!

I'd be glad if anybody tries it out and gives me some feedback!

[maxl]

I'm steadily working in the feedback I've received from various people. But mostly, everything is working as expected, so YAY!!!!

I also started working on the mobile specific parts of the game and I'm content to release an Android based demo too. iOS is out of the question for the demo as it does not allow the release of "unfinished" games, AFAIK.

[collider]

Oh, hey - just found this dev log. Loved Rico, looking forward to giving this one a spin. Screenshots look great.

[maxl]

Oh, hey - just found this dev log. Loved Rico, looking forward to giving this one a spin. Screenshots look great.

I'm always positively thrilled to be approached by people knowing my previous games! Thanks for reminding me why I do all of this! 

[Scott]

Really digging the finessed animation with the very pixelated graphics in this. Nice stuff maxl, look forward to more!

[dmitry_minsky]

Seem it can be a nice game! I have a maybe stupid question, but why you start development in Java? I want to try your demo, but was confused with many JDK versions for Mac on Oracle site, I just don't know which I should download)

[maxl]

Really digging the finessed animation with the very pixelated graphics in this. Nice stuff maxl, look forward to more!

Thanks! ^^

I have a maybe stupid question, but why you start development in Java? I want to try your demo, but was confused with many JDK versions for Mac on Oracle site, I just don't know which I should download)

You mean how to play my game? If you're on a Mac that's not too old, you shouldn't need to download anything at all. What happens if you double-click the JAR file after you downloaded it?
I mainly started working in Java because it features the awesome library LibGDX. Apart from being an all around great library, it lets me develop games for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android AND iOS simultaneously, which is a HUGE plus.

I admit the current distribution (simply a *.jar file) is not very elegant or user-friendly. I will definitely add proper executables for Windows, Mac and Linux when I release the full game (at the latest).

[maxl]

Nubs' Adventure is now running at a smooth 60 FPS on my Nexus 4!



Next task: finding out how InApp billing works on Android.

[maxl]

I might have been a bit too hasty about my optimization skills. Testing on a Samsung Galaxy S yielded results that were not nearly as good as 60 FPS. The phone represents the base line of what I want to support,so I want to make it work on it.  I'm certain that there is a lot of performance potential without sacrificing graphical fidelity. Profiling revealed that I'm doing a lot of unnecessary stuff in the physics department. Logic vs. drawing is about tied for CPU consumption now.

First thing I did was putting objects "to sleep" more aggressively so they consume less CPU. Also, I tweaked the Box2D step function to do much less iterations per logical step.

Not sure if I can optimize a lot in the rendering department. Much of the performance is eaten up by the particle rendering. We'll see if I can do something about that!

[Ziz]

Not sure if I can optimize a lot in the rendering department. Much of the performance is eaten up by the particle rendering. We'll see if I can do something about that!

Hehe, I had the same problems some days ago, too.
Particles look awesome, but may be more expensive than thought... I myself had the problem, that the bouncing of particles needed too much calculations of vectors lengths, so I changed the code in more guessing the length than really calculating it. ~10% inaccuracy, but good enough for particles. :D

[maxl]

I designed some icons for iOS and Android devices:

Should do for now!

[maxl]

A wild sparrow appears!



I'm working on a new enemy that circles around you and can also avoid your boomerang.

[maxl]

I've just released an annoucement trailer:



I'd appreciate any comments, as making videos is not really something I have a lot of experience in!

[maxl]

I know, I know, ... I haven't been very active posting stuff. Part of the reason is my Master's thesis (now finished, YAY \o/).

On the other hand, I am getting closer and closer to releasing what I'd like to call "Early Access". Here's my plan: I want to release the game with the current content (which is at least an hour of gameplay) for free on Android. Inside the game, there will be me banging away at my desk in some places (see screenshot above). You can talk to me and buy me a coffee (for ~1 dollar, via IAP) to support the further development of the game. It's kinda like a kickstarter/patreon/early access/whatever, but its different in the way it handles payments. What's your thoughts on that? Goole allows donations via IAPs, Apple unfortunately doesn't. I'd probably have to give the player a stupid hat or something along those lines in return... which actually isn't the worst idea anyway! But Android's first!

Other than that, I'm deep in the process of optimization. I followed the "Rules Of Optimization" religously and then had a game that barely ran at 60 FPS on my Nexus 4 and well below that (~25 FPS) on "weak" devices like the Samsung Galaxy S. Profiliing and optimization were a real big part of my development time in the last few weeks. I'm still not content, but I at least fixed the important/obvious things: minimzing texture switches and render flushes, reducing draw calls, only updating what's needed, Box2D optimizations, eliminating heap allocations in the game loop, ... I'm still hitting the capability limits of older devices (they're damn fill rate limited) so I'm thinking about providing an option to reduce gameplay irrelevant things like the backgrounds, decorations and certain particle effects.

I'm also currently running a beta-test for Android. If you want to participate (which would be awesome :D), join the google group here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/nubs-adventure---alpha-testers
Then you can download the game here:
https://play.google.com/apps/testing/nubs.earlyaccess

[maxl]

Ok, screw the closed beta! I released the game in its current state on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nubs.earlyaccess

I hope to get more feedback with this... we'll see!

[maxl]

Been fixing bugs left and right in the Android version. But it has become really stable and most bugs were just minor issues anyway. Yeah!!! 

[maxl]

A Russian gaming site covered the Android release of Nubs' Adventure. Now I get dozens of Russian comments in the Google Play Store. Thank god for Google Translate! :D So far, the reception has been really positive!

[maxl]

Been working on new mechanics. First up: teleporters!

[maxl]

I've been starting to combine existing elements to create new and interesting gameplay situations:

[maxl]

I've been adding new puzzles. One involves the fairy and placing shards on pillars: